Monday, June 14, 2010

BP and the Floor of the Sea

It appears certain now: the well casing of the Deepwater Horizon bore is and has been leaking into the sea floor at a depth of ~1000 ft. Leaking may not be entirely the proper word. It is not known, nor even discussed, as to when this may have occurred. This was discovered during the top kill drill mud injection, which is now believed to have injected much of the drilling mud into the sea floor where a disk joint failed. Which means, of course, that when the drilling mud isn't in "open communication in the strata or the rock formations below the sea floor," the oil, gushing upward, is.

Well, at least BP had the sense to drill the relief wells to a depth of 10,000 ft. They've kept this a secret until now, knowing of the problem weeks ago. Still being dicks. Nonetheless, with evidence of yet another problem -- perhaps the problem - it appears that the remote acoustic kill switch would not have actually prevented BP from having to drill relief wells. This subsurface spill appears to be the source of multiple leaks on the sea bed. From one, to many and one.

And what if there should be other broken joints below 10,000 ft.? More oil squirting into the sea floor way down deep? One presumes that BP's extensive environmental impact studies of this scenario have evaluated the situation across multiple parameter spaces within BP's cutting edge subsurface modeling frameworks, and has thusly determined that "open communication" of oil into the strata is acceptable to the strata at that depth. So as not the harm the walruses.

Now, what does oil gushing into the the sea floor, at 1000 ft, or 10,000 ft, actually do? Potential calamity? now, tomorrow, months, years or ... never? Just eternal, befouling seepage. Now, there's an apropos and much deserved epitaph for BP. How about Befouling Peckerheads?

It certainly does seem like oil saturating the subsurface strata could grease the slide of all sorts of seismic activity. But maybe not. Who knows? I expect we can be certain BP does not, and couldn't give a shit either. I also expect the 10,000 foot depth is the product of BP's extensive modeling of this very problem, and that a conversation in summation may have gone something like this:

I wonder when Americans are going to start viewing BP as an elite, embedded, forward covert invasion force of Britain. Really, they've been fucking up the US and killing Americans for decades now, and are making hand over fist in the process. What an op. This foreign company, operating through domestic agents in US government, essentially gets the oversight they want, which is none. They make scads, and ship off the dividends mostly to Britain, where pensioners wail about those ghastly Americans dishonouring that fine Tony Hayward and sullying the image of BP, which is British! but which is not to be called British.

As to the domestic agents, well, those have been obvious for years of course, and recently we've just learned of the BP-Rentboy Rahm connection, and what a charmer it is. More agents.

I've been rather amazed by the specious arguments surrounding defending BP from seizure. 30,000 jobs in America is somehow supposed to justify this clear threat to national security. The notion that umbrella corp BP must not be dismantled to save jobs is risible. As an umbrella corp, BP functions, as some have noted, as a bank: much of what they purport to do, is actually done by other companies. And the work that BP actually does, it does badly, and lethally so. It commits ecocide and homicide with impunity and federal agency.

BP simply needs to be deconstructed, reduced to its previously independent parts. Done in an orderly fashion, this process will actually restore jobs that BP cut in consolidation upon consolidation. This umbrella bureaucracy is ruthless in cost cutting to point of evaluating workers lives as childhood rhymes. Beyond that sociopathy lies just the plain brutal cheap-shitness of them. Land and human be damned. Capitalism in peak form.

BP must be rent asunder. Remove that cloak of ill thought of black and chintzy profit. Cast away that umbrella corp, that useless smothering gob of self-important bureaucracy serving only itself and its close coked-up MMS friends. Do this, and lift the pall cast by the literal black shadow of this Beast Pandora.